social media strategy

The latest report on marketing leadership is out from Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Their survey of 5,000 marketers asks questions like what specific channels are you using for digital marketing, do you plan to increase your spend here, and so on. Reports like this don’t mean much to an individual company other than showing overall trends. But they’re still useful.

The study focuses on the digital space, so there’s no real comparison to off-line tactics or execution, but with that in mind, here’s my quick read of the report which surfaced a few interesting nuggets:

Listening. I talk about listening a lot. Which is a really, really funny thing if I think about it. Maybe I talk about listening too much and in fact, should be listening more. Listening is not only under-rated. It is also not being done thoughtfully.

When I talk to most of the clients about listening (snicker) I find out that they are making the mistake that everyone makes.

Last week we had a great conversation about social media marketing being at risk because we are not yet nailing the content and listening side of the equation. I completely skipped channel relevance because I feel it is a bigger challenge. Having a strong channel strategy scares a lot of marketers because they know in their hearts that a solid approach to channels take more time and energy than they may be ready to commit.

I am here to tell you that these thoughts are partly true and partly false. You see, the mistake I think marketers make in channel strategy is a three-part problem. One, the belief that one status update fits all. Second, that all channels are created and function equally. And finally, that you have to be on ALL of them. Let’s break it down a bit.

On assignment for my college newspaper, I stood with the general manager of a minor league baseball team at home plate of an aging stadium. We chatted and gazed across the manicured turf, talking sports and marketing. “I can’t get into NASCAR,” he proclaimed. “Too much advertising.”

He said this, with ads that spanned from foul pole to foul pole, three ads deep, on the outfield fence, standing larger than life before us.

For small and medium-sized businesses, the prospect of developing a comprehensive social media strategy is overwhelming. Which networks should you use? How do you keep up with conversations and engage your audience across half a dozen platforms? How often should you post updates? By following a few simple steps and creating a strategic plan, a perfect social media strategy is well within your reach.

Using a blend of research and real world client data, Solis and Li have established a social business strategy DNA – a set of strategic characteristics that are common among successful social organizations.

The book highlights seven success factors, including social business best practices, pitfalls, and practical exercises to help guide you – all in an easy to consume format (~100 pages).

Does your organization have a social business strategy in place? Which of the seven success factors below are proving to be the most challenging? The comments are yours.

Social media can be confusing; it’s full of acronyms and strange symbols and it moves at a high speed. If social media isn’t your core business it can be tempting to put your faith in a practitioner with thousands of personal Facebook friends, Instagram and Twitter followers, who promises to somehow make it easy. However, advice from many consultants and social media “gurus” like myself has to be taken with grain of salt. There is no default rule of social media marketing and sometimes we have personal interests at play. Positioning social to be much more complex and scary than it actually is benefits us gurus/consultants. After all, how would you survive the online world without us?

When it comes to social media, there is an ongoing focus on driving traffic to your digital home bases and outposts such as websites, blogs, and social networks. But how about using these channels to drive traffic to your physical store?

It’s about that time of year again. The planning and budgeting process for 2014 marketing budgets has commenced. At least for companies whose budgets are tied to a calendar year, our fiscal year budgeting counterparts are a month into the year and are probably still waiting on budget approval. Heh. When I was in corporate this was always my favorite time of the year. I always wanted to start planning around this time, instead of waiting until October or November like everyone else. I wanted the opportunity to put together something that was really special. It is the chance to really think about what we should be doing, put some thinking around it and hope to sell in enough budget to make it a reality. It’s the time of year when creative juices fly and marketing wings spread. And you can bet that social media is going to be on the radar for significant planning and budget increases again.

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About Social Media Explorer

Social Media Explorer is a digital and social marketing strategy house and an information products company. From helping clients build business and measure digital success to offering unique consumer insights through our innovative approach to consumer research to educating audiences at our exclusive events, Social Media Explorer is leading businesses into the social and digital realm.

Anchored by years of experience as digital marketing and social media marketing strategists, partners Jason Falls and Nichole Kelly offer business-oriented social and digital marketing strategy and management, educational events and custom training, industry and custom research products, a learning community and question-answer site and a noted industry conference and event series called Explore.